MRPL delays expansion

ough market conditions and severe cost overruns have forced India’s Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. (MPRL) to delay its refinery expansion from June 2010 to October 2011. Under the expansion plan, MRPL will raise the capacity of its refinery, located in Mangalore in the southern state of Karnataka, from 9.69 million metric tons per year (mtpy) to 15 million mtpy. “We have been beleaguered by an overheated market hampering appointment of process licensors, delay in land acquisition and the steep increase in steel and cement prices in the last 12 to 18 months,” U.K. Basu, MRPL’s managing director, said. Meanwhile, MRPL is using the 15-month time overrun to re-engineer the process design to enable the plant to handle more acidic crudes, the company said. (December 12, 2008)